In response to the growing trend of macro-based threats, a new feature in Office 2016 allows an enterprise administrator to block users from running macros in Office documents that originated from the Internet. This feature was documented back in March: New feature in Office 2016 can block macros and help prevent infection, and the predominant…
Category: Office
Where’s the Macro? Malware authors are now using OLE embedding to deliver malicious files
Recently, we’ve seen reports of malicious files that misuse the legitimate Office object linking and embedding (OLE) capability to trick users into enabling and downloading malicious content. Previously, we’ve seen macros used in a similar matter, and this use of OLE might indicate a shift in behavior as administrators and enterprises are mitigating against this…
Malicious macro using a sneaky new trick
We recently came across a file (ORDER-549-6303896-2172940.docm, SHA1: 952d788f0759835553708dbe323fd08b5a33ec66) containing a VBA project that scripts a malicious macro (SHA1: 73c4c3869304a10ec598a50791b7de1e7da58f36). We added it under the detection TrojanDownloader:O97M/Donoff – a large family of Office-targeting macro-based malware that has been active for several years (see our blog category on macro-based malware for more blogs). However, there wasn’t…
New feature in Office 2016 can block macros and help prevent infection
Macro-based malware is on the rise and we understand it is a frustrating experience for everyone. To help counter this threat, we are releasing a new feature in Office 2016 that blocks macros from loading in certain high-risk scenarios. Macro-based malware infection is still increasing Macro-based malware continues its rise. We featured macro-based malware…